Startup-friendly tax measures in Budget: FM at Startup India launch

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday kick-started the government’s ambitious Start-Up India mission, which envisages technology business incubators and research parks, at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi

Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday kick-started the government’s ambitious Start-Up India mission, which envisages technology business incubators and research parks, at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi.

Speaking at the opening session of ‘Start-up India’ movement, Arun Jaitley on Saturday said the campaign will help change conventions while the government will only be a facilitator for start-ups. He also announced that the upcoming budget will include start-up friendly tax measures.

“ PM’s own idea was that start ups need to be encouraged. Both the banking system and government will make the resources available. We are fully conscious of the adverse situation in which we are struggling to keep respectable growth rates in Indian economy,” Jaitley said at the launch event.

“We ostensibly broke away from “license raj” in 1991, conceived with idea that government will decide which businesses can run. Our effort over last few years was to restrict role of states in policy domain,” he added.

He also said that the world universally recognizes India as probably the fastest growing major economies, but we have our own challenges to work on.

“We are fully conscious of the adverse situation in which we are struggling to keep respectable growth rates in Indian economy,” he said.

The Finance Minister further said that it was the Prime Minister’s own idea to encourage the start-ups need.

“Both the banking system and government will make the resources available,” he added.

Later in the day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will release the Start-Up Action Plan, visit a virtual exhibition and interact with start-up entrepreneurs at the event

Will join the programme to commence the Start-up India movement this evening. Looking forward to interacting with start-up entrepreneurs,” Modi tweeted.

In another tweet, he said: “Start-Up India movement begins today (Saturday). This movement celebrates the energy and enterprising spirit of our youth.”

“The launch event is aimed at celebrating the entrepreneurship spirit of country’s youth and will be attended by CEOs and founders of top start-ups from across the country and abroad,” the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said in a release.

The function is being attended by CEOs and founders of top Start-ups from across the country and abroad.

The Prime Minister will visit a virtual exhibition and interact with Start-up entrepreneurs. He will release the Start-up Action Plan, and address the gathering.

The objective is to reinforce commitment of the Government towards creating an ecosystem that is conducive for growth of Start-ups.

The event also features interactive talks with global leaders and venture capitalists such as Masayoshi Son, founder-CEO of SoftBank, and Adam Nuemann, founder of WeWork.

Investors’ association TiE Silicon Valley’s president Venktesh Shukla said a large number of start-ups were failing and “we should allow them to open and close their units in an easy way. It is extremely critical because a lot of their energy is wasted in unproductive work”. Norms should also be eased for Indian start-ups to raise money, he said.

Raising concerns on taxes in India, Kanwal Rekhi, managing director of Inventus Capital, said: “Investment through Mauritius is not taxed, but those from the United States come under the tax ambit. We don’t want to invest through an indirect route, we want to make investment directly from the Silicon Valley… There is an incentive to invest in stock markets but disincentive to invest in startups. Why so?”

Vinod Dham, regarded as the father of the Pentium chip, said jobs in India will be created by start-ups, “so why give them step-mother ly treatment?”

Meanwhile, in a private survey by a social networking site, 98% of the respondents said the movement should cover all industries, not just digital.